‘These highly interactive webinars [offered by the Geographical Association (GA)] provide primary teachers with the substantive knowledge to enable them to deliver relevant, engaging and stimulating geography lessons.
Focusing on different subjects each session, this course provides practical, transferable ideas to trial before rolling them out in the classroom. Take this knowledge even further by exploring the multiple connections, stereotypes and misconceptions that can make each element challenging to teach and learn.
Choose from human or physical topics in primary geography to build your confidence in the subject or take your primary geography to the next level.
Each booking also gives you complimentary access to a number of In the Know titles to take your knowledge even further.’
(See https://portal.geography.org.uk/event/view/E000158 and https://portal.geography.org.uk/event/view/E000157 for further details)
The first of two physical geography sessions took place this morning. We had a number of teachers attending throughout the UK and several accessing the recording and resources at a more convenient time. Over the course of three and a half hours, we explored the following themes, intermixed with plenty of activities, whole group discussion opportunities and contributions in the accompanying chat feed:
- Latitude, longitude, night and day;
- Climate, biomes and vegetation belts;
- Weather: Clouds, winds, precipitation.
After introducing myself, providing some background information about the Geographical Association’s website (https://geography.org.uk/), its Professional Award (https://geography.org.uk/events-cpd/cpd-toolkit/ga-professional-award/) and Primary Geography Quality Mark (PGQM) (https://geography.org.uk/quality-marks/), we moved swiftly on to explore ‘Latitude, longitude, night and day‘ together. Learning to tell the time is an early primary skill; understanding how time works through night and day and across different places around the globe is a more complex but equally essential geographical skill. Where do you start with teaching about longitude, latitude and how the position of Earth in space affects time? Alongside enhancing their subject knowledge, teachers were challenged to various activities and provided with additional teaching ideas.
Delegates were keen to carry on rather than pause for a break. We looked at ‘Climate, biomes and vegetation belts’ in some depth. Teachers talk about weather from the beginning of the primary years. However, understanding the relationship between weather and climate and how they affect the habitats of different animals and plants is a complex geographical skill. It is especially important to consider how climate and habitat are interlinked as human effects on climate become apparent. Again, practical tasks and teaching ideas were interspersed with the drip-feeding of knowledge to keep the audience suitably engaged.
We paused for fifteen minutes or so before resuming to investigate a new unit entitled ‘Weather: Clouds, winds, precipitation‘. Understanding physical geography includes an understanding of weather and weather patterns. The weather affects many parts of our life: everyday activities, like our choice of clothing for outdoor adventures, our moods and feelings, and the food we eat; and in landscape terms it characterises a place. Identifying different types of weather and understanding the geography behind them ensures we are informed about weather patterns and aware of weather phenomena and anomalies. The weather can be observed, measured and recorded in both formal and informal ways, and in this way weather can be compared and contrasted both within a local area and with locations in other parts of the world. As I had done previously, information was relayed and supplemented with activities and suggestions to support learning both in and beyond the classroom.
I allocated a few minutes for independent exploration and to take any questions from delegates after each section. However, during the plenary, we embarked upon some deeper reflection. At this point, individuals were asked to complete a Google Form, which gave them time to think about their key takeaways and next steps, as well as providing those at the GA and myself with invaluable feedback.
Some of their ‘concluding comments’ can be viewed below:
Sum up today’s webinar in five words or a sentence or two.
Very informative, giving a wide scope of subject knowledge across the curriculum.
Informative; good knowledge; engaging; interesting.
Impactful teaching ideas gained with good resources.
Very informative with good teaching ideas.
Very informative with ideas for teaching activities too.
What did you enjoy the most today and why? (WWW)
Suggested interactive activities. Lots of Digimap for Schools tutorials.
The range of activities shared.
Hearing about new ways the staff at school can approach the topics covered today.
I enjoyed the ideas for teaching.
The (whirlwind!) amount of information on each topic to help subject knowledge as this is what I really needed as a new subject leader, plus ideas to use in class along with the links.
What did you enjoy the least and why? (EBI)
Not sure.
Nothing; all fine.
N/A.
Some of the in-depth information about clouds as it does not feature in our curriculum offer and, therefore, wasn’t directly relevant to me, but interesting nonetheless.
Sometimes the pace was a little too quick for me to absorb the information – I’m a fast note-taker, but I couldn’t keep up with the speed at which we went through slides at times.
List your key takeaways from today’s webinar.
Different uses of Digimap for Schools and display/school challenge ideas.
Resources to use.
Ideas, resources and strategies that I gained from the session.
Virtual fieldwork opportunities look great!
Key learning on biomes, weather and climate and navigation. Quick activities to aid learning in class and promote higher order thinking. Ideas to take to colleagues on how to take our geography learning outside.
Consider your next steps. List three things that you intend to do.
Suggest some enrichment activities to year groups to supplement existing curriculum framework that we follow. Observe some teaching in KS2 (now I have more understanding of what they may be teaching).
Use some of the activities with the children.
Speak to my head about PGQM and Professional Award. Catch up with staff that asked about biomes and time zones. Develop a staff meeting talking about fieldwork and the 8 way thinking approach.
Find out more about the Amazon and Arctic virtual field trips.
1) First see where I can incorporate the knowledge I’ve gained into our next teaching topic in Y5 on biomes. 2) Explore opportunities to use the ideas shared on learning outside the classroom and using Digimaps for Schools and Google Earth Pro and share with colleagues. 3) More widely, as a new Subject Lead, I need to look at our long-term planning as a school and check where the curriculum needs tweaking/where I can add opportunities for fieldwork in each topic if possible.
How has attending this webinar series supported you in your role as a Geography Subject Leader/classroom teacher?
Developed my understanding of how geography looks across the school (I teach Y1). And given suggestions for enrichment/tools, etc. that I can share with staff.
Enhanced my knowledge and new activities we could do as a school.
I feel better equipped at supporting my staff in the topics covered.
It has improved my subject knowledge and has given me ideas to pass on to the Subject Lead and teachers, particularly for fieldwork and use of technology.
It has given me a much better foundation for my subject knowledge so I feel more confident to analyse our geography curriculum and to make changes (previously I knew changes were needed, but now where or how!!). This was a really useful morning – thank you!
Additional comments inserted in the accompanying chat feed or from follow-up e-mails:
Thank you, it’s been great.
Thank you very much!
I’ve just attended your (very informative!) fantastic training session through the GA and thought I’d share the link to the work my partner is doing with cloud classification, if you’d like to try out the app or potentially share with colleagues (Cloud Point). I look forward to next week’s training session!
Many thanks for the course yesterday, it was really useful.
If you have happened to miss this webinar series, then PDF downloads are also available to purchase via the GA’s shop, either as ten individual titles or as a full set (https://portal.geography.org.uk/shop/index?profile=In%20the%20Know). These provide straightforward, accurate and trustworthy background knowledge, explanation, diagrams and glossary on topics in the geography National Curriculum so that teachers can develop their teaching with confidence.
I look forward to another enlightening morning on Thursday 13th February 2025.